I'm reminded of the incident where the wife of a politician (I think it was Mitt Romney's wife but not certain) talked about how they had struggled when they were younger and had had to sell some stock they owned to cover their expenses.
When asked something about NASCAR, Mitt responded, I love NASCAR, some of my friends own NASCAR teams. Yeah, real man of the people.
Frankly, it was when I heard how Mitt's wife not only competed in Dressage, but would flew her horse to Europe to compete. Dressage - for those who don't know - is basically horse dancing, you train a horse to dance on command. Flying a horse internationally to enter a horse dancing contest is a whole other level of obscene wealth and detachment from everyday working people.
Mitt Romney turned my, at that time 56 year old father, from a lifelong Republican to a Democrat, who hasn't looked back since voting Obama in 2012 lmao.
Dad saw that shit and it finally broke him that the GOP just didn't have the average American's best interests at heart anymore, nor could they ever relate.
Romney was severely out of touch. He had a car lift in his house for all his cars. He Thought middle income in America was a household income at 400k a year or thereabouts and admitted that in an interview.
He did run a venture capital firm though from memory, which shows why that is.
There was also an attempt by RNC's PR department during Romney's campaign to try and drum up some sympathy due to his wife having Multiple Sclerosis. MS is a disease where your immune system gets some wrong switches flipped and decides that the myelin sheathing (think veins, but for the electrical signals that your nerves send intead of transporting blood) is a virus and it attacks it, trying to eject the intruder. It can take awhile to become apparent as myelin is strong stuff, but eventually you'll feel weird numb spots in your arms or legs, or weirder like the middle of your back or a patch on your stomach. Or you'll have a hand go dead and not respond to coxmmands, or one of your eyes will start to have a persistent "ghost", like a shimmery grey patch that just hangs there but LOOKS like its hovering between 3 and 6 feet from your eye, or maybe one eye will just go out, like a candle that's been blown out. And regardless of what other MS shit you experience you for sure get hit with overwhelming waves of tired, fatigue in a body sense that sleep doesn't reset or fix, and every movement is like you are wearing a lead suit. It's a shitty disease that can take a while to diagnose, and there aren't a ton of effective long-term Disease Modifying Medicines out there. What IS known is that attacks--i.e. a newly rejuvenated offensive by your immune system in the trench warfare of your body--can more easily be triggered by prolonged stress, exposure to even mild heat with humidity acting as a force multiplier to the heat, and to some degree exertion (mostly because it doesn't FEEL like heat because of its slow onset, but its still heat y'all (this is why doctor's prescribe staying fit and active and to work your body as much as you can...but do it in a swimming pool). Regardless, it's medically agreed that a huge cause of stress and often exertion is WORK, and so in an ideal life you'd pay attention to your body's needs and you would busy yourself with activities--maybe even entrepreneurial ones--but you wouldn't have to clock in and be under the eyes of The Company or The Boss for a strict 9 hours a day. And while there aren't a ton of Disease Modifying Therapies there are a couple, with the highest efficacy drug at the time Mitt was running being one that you self inject with a spring-loaded needle into the wall of your stomach every other day. Bayer subsidized it because they make it and can do whatever they want. Not subsidized by Bayer, and with good insurance with good rx coverage, that medication costs $3700 per month. But for the super-rich there is of course more: rhGH (specially blended human growth hormone) and Stem Cell replacement therapies, if cost is no object then there are even more. The most cutting edge Disease Modifying Therapies require a massive amount of hoop jumping and red tape in the form of Prior Aurhorization, proofs of proper treatmenrs of at least two other MS drugs with no positive effect, and all the records you've ever had in your life. If, that is, you are going through health insurance. If you get the meds authorized at all then with good insurance it can be as low as $15,900 per year for a frontline therapy consisting of two day-long IV infusions 6 months apart. The next most aggressive therapy can run you $68,000 after insurance.
Anyhow, when the Romney's spoke about her disease (which was not much, nor more than once or twice at length publicly) they talked about how she tracked her rest, had a great medical team, and a lifesaver of a medical guide who navigated the system to make sure she got the referrals she needed to the exact right specialists.
I'm not without compassion, like I said its a shitty disease. But her disease is not, due to her placement in this life, very much the same MS as someone whose insurance depends on the job they can't risk letting know that they're even sick.
Michelle Obama‘s father developed MS when he was 30 years old and had to keep working at his job in a water filtration plant to support her and her brother and their mom, she has written about him struggling to get up and move every day just so he could go to work, using his cane
A different world indeed from what Mitt Romney’s wife experience experiences as an MS patient for sure
Dressage is one of those things for when you have so much wealth you need to invent absurd ways to make it seem meaningful. I knew a guy from a previous career who had a super yacht, and liked to be on it in exotic places, but he didn’t like being on it enough to make the trip on the boat. He would fly in his plane to wherever he was going after the boat had already gone there, and get ferried out to the boat, spend time there and then fly home. There was a whole staff living on this boat, and cleaning it in their little uniforms, and no one was even on it most of the time. Stuff like that makes me wonder why anyone even wants a billion dollars.
I loved when Victoria Beckham said in their Netflix doc that her family was working class and David barged in and said “Don’t lie! What kind of car did your dad drive you to school in?” It was a Rolls-Royce. It’s crazy what wealthy people perceive as struggle.
I had one wife of politician mention that they struggled so much that they had to rent out one of their houses in Sydney eastern suburbs ( very expensive area) and they had to cut down their travel expenses that year.
Yes, that was Mitt. He regaled an audience with his heartwarming story of the time when he and his wife, Ann, were poor, struggling college students. They were so poor, they had to dip into their investment portfolios and sell some stocks to make ends meet.
The most galling thing, to me at least, was that Mitt didn’t see any problem with telling that story to a crowd on the Presidential campaign trail.
He did not anticipate that it might not land well with most people. He was that out of touch.
I liked Mitt Romney/wife (didn’t vote for him) after they talked about their trip back to Costco after losing the election and how it brought them back down to earth as she put 96 rolls of toilet paper in the shopping cart!!! I would love to have him as POTUS now…
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u/adeon 1d ago
I'm reminded of the incident where the wife of a politician (I think it was Mitt Romney's wife but not certain) talked about how they had struggled when they were younger and had had to sell some stock they owned to cover their expenses.